Inspiron 1545 fan

Hi,
I have just received my new 1545 and installed Intrepid on it (not insterested in vista at all) and to my surprise i noticed the fan stays completely off until the temperature reaches around 65C and then stops when it drops to around 55C (i think). I dont know if this is normal; but it worries me quite a bit that the temperature always goes up and down because of the bursts of the fan (as opposed to a constant low level spin of the fan).
I tried i8k; the fan speeds are displayed... but adjusting fan speeds fail no matter what...
at this point i have a few options:
- ask some Dell engineer if such fan behaviour and system temperature is normal and trust him/her
- wait for some hypothetical BIOS update to allow fan control (either thru i8k or BIOS settings)
- wait for some hypothetical patch to i8k
- pray the laptop doesnt burn itself to death due to a sily BIOS/i8k problem
- send back the unit as faulty
- buy a laptop cooler (urgh... especially on a new machine)
any ideas ?

You are not alone on this issue. On my new 1545 I have installed I8K, and SpeedSwitchXP (I ditched the Vista for XP Pro), but neither of them allow me to control the fan speeds; I can, though, control when the fan cuts in/out, so it never goes above 60. I have SpeedSwitchXP set to Dynamic switching, which is meant to reduce cpu frequency when idle, hence less heat, but this does not seem to work; the frequency does not change.

All this makes the burst of high speed fan noise very annoying, much more like that of a desktop I used to own, and tends to give me a headache after a while. I also have an Inspiron 1300, and, when that is running, it is almost impossible to hear the fan (mind you, I did have to replace that fan after about a year, notwithstanding the fact that Dell wanted me to change the motherboard and cpu heat sink as well !)

Speedfan is not able to change the fan speed of Inspiron1545 either. It is very annoying there seems to be only two fan speeds available (0 and 3000rpm), so it's all quiet or very noisy. I would prefer the fan to stay at 1000rpm all the time. Is this fixable ?